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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29639310">A Rose Amongst Thorns</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgles123/pseuds/Higgles123'>Higgles123</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Movies - Nolan)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:06:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,369</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29639310</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgles123/pseuds/Higgles123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess gets a phone call to rescue some abandoned kittens but what follows is the start of the rest of her life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bane (DCU)/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>Gotham was a mess, and nighttime was the worst. It truly was. Jess knew she shouldn’t have been out, and the small penknife sticking out from in between the fisted hand that dangled down by her side wasn’t enough to give her even the smallest measure of confidence. She had gotten a call from a man who claimed to have found a litter of three kittens only a few blocks from her house about half an hour ago and she knew that she couldn’t ignore it. Everyone else in Gotham might only be looking out for themselves but not Jess. For two years now she had been a foster mom for dozens of cats and kittens, and she wasn’t about to give up now. Not when they needed someone to care for them more than ever before.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>She stopped at the sound of a noise behind her and turned in time to see a man and woman staggering out of an open doorway, half dressed and clearly very drunk.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“You wanna join us, doll?” the man grinned leeringly, his eyes raking over Jess’ chunky thighs in the skinny jeans she wore.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Er, no thank you,” she shook her head, wishing she had worn a baggier hoody so that her Dolly Parton sized breasts weren’t so visible. Well, ok, they weren’t <em>that</em> big, but she still had issues from being an early developer and catching a lot of unwanted attention from douchebags in high school.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>The man chuckled and wrapped a possessive arm around the woman’s hip before dragging her off down the street. With an inaudible sigh of relief, Jess lifted the hood of her jumper up over her auburn hair as if it somehow made her more inconspicuous and carried on walking as quickly as she could.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>When she reached the address she had been given, which was an alleyway nestled in between a completely ransacked pharmacy and a closed takeaway, she pulled out her phone to call the guy she had spoken to earlier; the guy who said he would meet her at this location.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Hey,” she could hear his smile in his voice, along with an accent of some sort. “You here?”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Yeah, I’m at the end of the alleyway,” she murmured.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>Suddenly from about halfway down, a man appeared and waved, his phone to his ear.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“They’re just behind this dumpster here,” he pointed to an area she couldn’t see but she surmised was at the back of the pharmacy.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>The phone cut off and she looked at the screen for a moment before moving. Something felt…off. Maybe she was just being paranoid. Giving herself an internal pep talk to pull herself together and not doubt everyone in this shit hole city, she started down the alleyway.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>As she got closer, the man’s smile widened and she couldn’t help but smile back. He pointed to a small back yard that was indeed at the rear of the pharmacy and Jess could hear faint mewling coming from behind the large dumpster. Setting her cat basket on the ground, she turned to ask the man a few more questions.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Have you seen their mom at all?”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“No,” he shook his head. “I’ve been past this way multiple times over the last few days and every time it’s just been the kittens on their own.”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Have you managed to feed them or anything?”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Well, I’ve been leaving saucers of milk out for them but that was about all really,” the man shrugged guiltily. “There were four but when I came along this morning there were only three left alive. That was when I knew I needed to get them some help and I found your name online.”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <em>That</em>
  <span> in itself should have set alarm bells ringing in her head because the internet had been shut off across the whole goddamn city, but all she was thinking about was the kittens. With a nod, she picked up the basket and edged slowly towards the dumpster. The mewling became louder with every step she took until the kittens were in plain sight. Her heart lurched and she bent down to the little creatures, cooing softly when they cried in fright.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“It’s ok little ones,” she murmured, picking up the first one and deciding it couldn’t have been much older than a few weeks. She held its face up to hers, smiling when its mewled and tried to wriggle out of her hands. “You’re gonna be alright now, little one. You’re all gonna be alright.”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>Apart from being very small and severely underfed, the kittens looked to be in relatively good health. No fleas and no signs of cat flu as far as she could tell. Fortunate little fellows indeed. Once they were carefully inside the basket, she zipped it up and reached for the unmoving kitten on the pile of newspapers that the kittens had called home. A single tear slid down her cheek before she could stop it and she swallowed the lump in her throat, wishing that she had somewhere proper to bury the poor little guy. Instead, with infinite gentleness, she sighed and put it back down where she found it, swallowing the sickening feeling in her stomach. Sniffing once, she brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand before zipping up the cat basket and standing to her feet.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“You did a really good thing looking out for these little guys,” she smiled at the man, who had been stood watching her. “Another couple of days and they never would have made it.”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“What will you do with them now?” the man asked, his navy blue eyes glistening under the security light on the wall behind him.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Take them home, feed them, play with them and most of all love them,” she answered. “And hopefully that’ll be enough. Although I don’t know what kind of life they’re gonna have, if any life at all; especially not if that psychopath who seems so determined to blow up the city gets his way.”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Indeed,” the man hummed in agreement. “You know, you seem like a good person, which is rare around here…And that’s why I’m sorry to have to do this to you.”</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>“Do what?” she frowned, dread wrapping its icy cold tendrils around her.</span>
</p><p class="yiv9583817669ydp54b1044MsoNormal">
  <span>But before the man could answer, she felt something sharp in the side of her neck. She kicked and scratched at the hands suddenly holding her, but her body felt limp; heavy. The last thing she saw was the basket of kittens before everything went black. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jess cracked open an eye and groaned. She felt like she had the hangover from hell. Her body was aching and she felt nauseous as anything. A shiver went up her spine and she decided she felt cold. Teeth chattering slightly, she opened her eyes fully and peered up at an unfamiliar ceiling. That was when everything suddenly came back to her with a jolt. She gasped and for a moment, was frightened to move.</p><p>“You’re finally awake then,” a voice spoke from somewhere in the dark of the room.</p><p>She sat up in a panic, ignoring the throbbing of her head, and glanced around desperately. She could make out the figure of a person close to the doorway and she could hear a strange sort of mechanical breathing. It was an odd noise; it was almost like how her mother had sounded lying in her hospital bed with her oxygen mask on, trying to hold onto the last fragments of life before death had finally claimed her.</p><p>The figure stood, and even in the darkness she could see its monstrous size stalking towards her. The light turned on and that was when Jess realised she was in the company of true evil.</p><p>“I understand from your expression alone that you are aware of who I am,” she could hear the man’s sneer from beneath the monstrous mask he wore.</p><p>She knew who he was. The whole of Gotham did. After all, only a few days before he had snapped a man’s neck on live television and then declared himself to be the reckoning of the entire city. He was Bane.</p><p>Watching him on the television, dressed in a thick sheepskin coat he had looked big; but here, right in front of her wearing nothing more than trousers and boots, she realised the man was positively enormous. His bare arms and chest were so muscular that they could have rivalled any WWE wrestler and his skin was littered with scars. But it was his eyes that terrified her the most. They were pretty much all she could see because the rest of his face was obscured by the mask he wore, and she found she couldn’t look at them for any longer. It was as though they were burning into her very soul.</p><p>Jess flung herself from the bed she was lying on and yanked at the door, while the masked man did nothing to stop her. Instead his gaze fell upon her with amusement, and he folded his arms across his chest while he watched her scratch at the door in a vain attempt to open it. He waited for her to scream; to beg for help, just as the weak and the helpless usually did, but in that regard she surprised him. She continued to bang and kick at the door until she realised there was no escape. Her shoulders slumped for a mere split second before she spun around with a look of venom on her face.</p><p>“What do you want with me?” she spat, and for the second in time in mere moments he found himself surprised. She had a tenacity that he had not expected.</p><p>“What do you think I want with you?”</p><p>“I have no idea, you sick fuck,” she growled.</p><p>“Such language from such an otherwise wholesome young lady such as yourself,” Bane tutted. “I would not have expected it.”</p><p>“How would you know what to expect from me? You don’t even know me.”</p><p>“That, my dear, is where you are wrong,” Bane murmured, stepping closer. He didn’t miss the way her eyes flickered nervously as he approached her, but she clenched her fists at her sides to try and give an outward impression of confidence. It was really rather amusing considering she barely reached the base of his throat. She was tiny compared to his giant frame. “Jessica Ratcliffe born on the 8<sup>th</sup> April, 1992 at Gotham General to a Collette Ratcliffe and a father unknown, weighing 6lbs and 12oz exactly. You lived solely with your mother until she died of cancer three years past and since then you have been somewhat of a recluse. You work in the small book shop around the corner from your house and you take in stray cats in your spare time.” He stepped even closer, forcing her to crane her neck to continue to meet his gaze. “Every Monday at approximately one in the afternoon you visit the homeless shelter near the town hall and make a sizeable donation of food items, and then you visit the cemetery where you leave a bunch of yellow tulips on your mother’s grave. You have left your mother’s bedroom exactly the way it was before she died and you have a sizeable collection of romance novels in your living room.”</p><p>Jess swallowed nervously, wondering how he knew all of this stuff about her but in the same breath realizing she would rather be ignorant about how he had acquired his knowledge.</p><p>“I could continue but I see that you now understand I do indeed know you very well, Miss Ratcliffe,” Bane said. “And I shall come to know you even better as the next few days and weeks progress.”</p><p>“If you think I’m going near you with a bargepole, you’ve got another thing coming,” Jess couldn’t stop her mouth for turning up in disgust. “I would rather whore myself out to every man in Gotham than let you come near me.”</p><p>“It’s not your body I seek to understand in greater detail, my dear,” he chuckled. “It’s your mind and your soul. I should like to learn more about the girl who continued to help those creatures most in desperate need of such a thing when the rest of the city is out to help only themselves. You might say that I am somewhat curious to discover what makes you light when the rest of this damnable city is so dark.”</p><p>He stepped back from Jess, and she let out an inaudible sigh of relief when his looming figure headed towards the door. He knocked once, a sharp rap that echoed authority and the door unlocked from the outside, revealing the merest hint of light from outside.</p><p>“I shall have some food brought to you and clean clothes for you to change into if you desire to wash,” he turned back to look at her briefly. “Perhaps when you are well fed and well rested you will be ready to spend some more time with me.”</p><p>Jess was about to retort that that would never be the case, but the words died on her lips as another more important thought entered her mind.</p><p>“Wait,” she called out before she could stop herself. “The kittens. Are they… alright?”</p><p>“They are still alive if that is what you are asking?” Bane replied, looking at Barsad, who was waiting in the hallway, with something close to amusement.</p><p>“Please let me help them then.” Jess didn’t care that her voice sounded so small; so pitiful. She just cared about helping those poor defenseless creatures. “If they’re alive still then let me look after them. Please.”</p><p>Bane paused momentarily before stepping out of the room without another word. As Barsad slammed the door shut and locked it, Bane mused on the girl’s parting words. She really was a most puzzling creature indeed.</p><p>Jess listened to the heavy footsteps disappearing and she finally allowed a tear to trickle down her cheek. She stifled a sob with her hand as she slid down the wall and landed on the floor.</p><p>What was to become of her now?</p>
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